


In This Light

by avecia



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 20:13:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9564527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avecia/pseuds/avecia
Summary: "She hates him, truly she does.  Hates how whenever this happens it makes her feel a heat inside her.  Makes her feel something other than the ice that infiltrated her veins all those months ago when the police turned up at her doorstep..."





	

**Author's Note:**

> New to AO3, not new to fanfic. Currently obsessed with this pairing.
> 
> Whilst trying to get down my future 'show-verse' fic plotted out for a multi-chapter, this one-shot (?) came to me. Modern AUs are completely out of my wheelhouse, but let's give this a shot.
> 
> I have a head-canon that the Starks are either Scottish (like myself), or from North England. You pick. A couple of points to note:-
> 
> a) Sansa is...well, Season 6 Sansa but with a lot of issues.  
> b) an 'empty' is just an empty house, like when your pal's parents go away for the weekend and you end up there for a party before ending up trashing the place:) Also, a 'utility room' is that baltic laundry room in your house, usually leads out to the garden (oh my God I sound so ridiculous explaining this, you all have imaginations, I'm sure you'll understand!)  
> c) This is influenced by The 1975, although moodier, if that's possible (see the lyrics for Fallingforyou for reference)  
> d) I wrote this to try to be a bit vague, not sure I managed it.
> 
> Other than that, it's nice to meet you all. Constructive crit welcome, hope you enjoy though.
> 
> Unbeta'd.
> 
> Ave x

The music thrums through the house and ends up pulsing through her veins.

 

She’s eighteen and this isn’t her first Friday night empty.  She knows what to expect.  Underage drinking, smoking, people doing lines in the bathroom.

 

She shared a joint with some random not long after she arrived.  So she’s buzzed and maybe drunk, but only a little.  Not enough to be oblivious to the looks he’s giving her from across the room.  She might just be intoxicated enough to forget who _he_ is and give him a few looks of her own.

 

Her sister is around somewhere.  Barely sixteen and already wreaking havoc amongst boys who don’t quite realise that she isn’t spending time with them because she wants to let them fuck her.  She’s fairly sure her sister would gut any of them that tried.

 

That doesn’t mean she’s going to let her baby sister go alone to some house party on the outskirts of town.

 

She suspects that’s also why _he’s_ here.

 

If it was three months ago, she’s sure it would have been her older brother sat in the corner of the room, glaring at any boy that dares cross their paths before becoming distracted by some girl and promptly forgetting all about his little sisters.

 

But three months ago Robb wouldn’t be dead, and neither would her parents.

 

There’s little she understands anymore.  Her dreams traded in for a job as head of her family.  Caring for two young boys and a girl who is determined to reject any kind of attempt to actually _be_ cared for.

 

She doesn’t understand why he keeps hanging around either.  She is surprised when she sees her sister slip away up the stairs, followed by a boy with hair as black as the night.  They are followed by eyes in the opposite corner and as much as she wants to march her sister home, tell her she’s too young, she knows _he_ wants to do the same, but won’t - because _he_ won’t overstep _her_.  So she doesn’t move.

 

It’s twisted, and doing nothing to stop her sister sleeping with a random at a party isn’t the right way to get back at _him_ , but she reminds herself that Arya is old enough to make these choices and is in no way going to be forced to do anything she doesn’t want to.  Not by a boy and certainly not by any member of her family.

 

She catches him looking at her, eyes dark, probably with anger at her inaction.

 

She doesn’t understand why _he_ is still here, _alive_ but her brother and parents aren’t.

 

Nobody should have survived that car wreck.  But _he_ did.

 

And she hates him for it.  She truly does.

 

After a second or two she gets up from the stained, buckled sofa, weaving through the drunken, sweaty, coked up bodies and heads towards the back door where the beers are being kept out in the cold.

 

She picks one from the soggy cardboard box and turns to go back inside.  He fills the door frame like a shadow, his look so dark and thunderous.

 

“What are you playing at?”

 

She is surprised he even speaks, raises her eyebrows and tries not to roll her eyes.  He could be referring to any manner of things, but probably her sister finding a bedroom upstairs with some guy.  She finds it all a little hypocritical and moves to go past him, but he reaches to the side, gripping her wrist as she goes.

 

“ _Sansa_ …”

 

It’s truly inconvenient how one little word can weaken her resolve, even more so that such a word is her own name on his lips.  She looks to where he holds her then upwards to find him staring at her, much like he was only five minutes before from across the room but now only inches away.

 

She doesn’t reply, nor does she struggle as his other hand reaches up to her neck and brings them face to face instead of side to side, his mouth closing over hers.  The cheap can of beer falls from her hand and she pulls him closer, feeling the cool brick of the utility room wall against her bare shoulders.

 

She hates him, truly she does.  Hates how whenever this happens it makes her feel a heat inside her.  Makes her feel something other than the ice that infiltrated her veins all those months ago when the police turned up at her doorstep with the ‘ _I’m sorry to have to inform you’_ speech.

 

That ice had felt like armour, everytime Arya told her to go fuck herself when she tried to convince her to go to school, when Rickon cried and told her she wasn’t his Mother and when Bran became wholly indifferent to her altogether.

 

And now her armour was melting under his touch.

 

He’d been in their home more often than not after he was discharged from hospital four weeks after the accident.  Arya had insisted.  Maybe her sister was a better person for not blaming _him_ for their parents’ and brother’s mortality.

 

She’d made it clear he was not welcome, even before the accident she’d never grown accustom to her older brother’s best friend who would brood in the corner but got on better with everyone in her family than she did.

 

She was selfish and jealous and bitter, only now she was _heartbroken_ too.

 

He’d said that to her, three nights ago when it all came to a head around their kitchen table.  Rickon had run off after she had finally snapped at him, telling her youngest brother that eating his greens was not optional all of a sudden because his Mother wasn’t there to force him.  Bran had sighed, glared at her and went off after his brother.  Arya hadn’t even bothered to turn up for dinner.  And _he_ , well he was sat at the opposite side of the table, glaring at her.

 

 _“That was entirely unnecessary, and you know it_.”

 

“ _Your presence is entirely unnecessary_.”

 

_“Maybe, but I’m trying hard not to take my survivor guilt out on everyone. You should try not to act so bitter over everything. We all know you’re heartbroken Sansa.”_

 

_He had the cheek to reach out to touch her hand across the table._

 

_She’d almost crumbled at that point, but instead pulled her hand from his, removed her napkin from her lap and moved to leave the dining room.  She fixed him with a glare that if she tried hard enough, she was convinced could turn him to stone._

 

_“You know nothing about me, Jon. Nothing at all.”_

 

Yet here he was, pressed against her, his tongue probing and _hard_ up against her thigh.  She’d still not said a single word to him.  She never does when _this_ happens.

 

And it had happened.  A few times.  Mostly when she’d been drinking, or was high.  Him too.  She’d discovered that two weeks after he started showing up to her home.  Long before that dinner he’d deigned it appropriate to tell her how she felt.

 

He _did_ have survivor’s guilt. Guilt he’d try to smoke or drink away, at least in the first few weeks.  On one occasion she’d been pliant enough herself with vodka to join him on her garden steps for a smoke.  They didn’t speak, but he’d looked at her in a way she’d never seen before.

 

He leaned over to pass her a cigarette, lighting it for her before managing to get himself caught on her winter coat and mumbled an apology - one she neither accepted nor declined, instead she simply flicked the remainder of her cigarette off into the bushes and turned to look at him.

 

He had placed his hand on her knee.  In some sort of placating gesture she’s sure.  Some sort of pathetic attempt to give her comfort.  In that split second she had decided he could give her comfort on her terms, taking his hand and moving it under her skirt.  If he’d been hesitant he gave nothing away.  She had been the one to pull him to her lips that time.

 

There had been a few times since, though she never spoke about it.  Not with him, not with anyone.  She allowed it to make herself feel good, for the two or twenty minutes it took to get her to feel something other than the emptiness she usually felt.

 

His hair was down tonight, a change from his usual carefully crafted bed-head, man-bun.  She runs her fingers through it as his fingers run along her waistband.  When they find their way inside her underwear she throws her head back and grips his shoulders.

 

Vaguely, through the pleasing jolts that reach her brain all the way from between her thighs, she feels his lips on her neck.  If she runs one hand from his shoulder, down his chest and into his own jeans then that’s her business.

 

They don’t kiss, instead panting into each other, him onto her neck, her into his ear. She feels her body begin to betray her and suddenly he stiffens under her ministrations, feeling him on her fingers as she tries to force a strangled cry of pleasure back down her throat.  She’d never give him the satisfaction of it if she could.

 

It’s awkward as they untangle each other and she is aware that he looks at her with something in his eyes, some feeling she is incapable of.

 

Something she cannot and is not ready to accept.

 

Because he is right, she _is_ heartbroken.  She is shattered and he cannot make it better.

 

What’s worse, she cannot make _him_ better.

 

Because as much as she hates him for being _here_ when her brother and parents are _not_ , she knows that he feels the loss too.  The guilt manifesting into his unwanted intrusion into her life.  It’s the only concession she will make towards him.

 

She straightens her underwear and leans down to pick up the discarded can of beer, now dented around the top.

 

Her sister suddenly appears at the door, looking for a beer.  She doesn’t notice him standing in the shadows, doing up the belt on his jeans so she hands Arya the beer in her hand and soon they are alone again.

 

“Sansa…” he tries again.

 

She takes a breath, shakes out her hair and turns to look at him.

 

“Just... _don’t_ , we’re not friends, we’re not anything.  We don’t need to talk.”

 

He moves to her side, but doesn’t look at her.  He does lean down and mumbles into her ear.

 

“I’ve never wanted to be your _friend_.”

 

Suddenly she is alone again, staring out into the darkness of the garden through the window of the utility room.  The house is a hole, some run down council house that she normally wouldn’t have been seen dead in.

 

 _Normally_.

 

Normally she would feel humiliated at her actions.

 

But that requires her to be able to feel anything _at all_.

 


End file.
